The morning of the all hands summon to the Blasted Lands, Aely went for a walk. The late fall air was clear and cool, and leaves crunched under their feet in the less-traveled parts of the streets. She and Roger took the long way around Old Town, south through Tanner Circle and down Bulwarks, across […]

I’d highly suggest reading up on Herding Cats in general, especially if you’re filling in for heal lead and aren’t usually the one with the job.

Otherwise, this is just a quick overview of how and why I arrange our healers the way I have been – which isn’t to say that it’s the end-all, be-all of healing assignments for Naxx! Just how things have worked for us. Most fight’s I’m going to assume six healers, though some I’ll recommend an off-spec/hybrid healer to help out (or possibly picking up a seventh healer), and you can almost always safely substitute classes.

Yes, Naxx25 has been done with only two healers, but I’d venture to guess that those raids are experienced and not just starting out, and those new ones are the raids that this guide is primarily written for (’cause if you’ve got the place on farm, you don’t need my piddly advice on how to set up your healers!).

Offtanks – Two healers each – Patchwerk’s Heroic Strike can hit an offtank three times in very short succession – this is a high stress fight for healers.

Raid Mans – no healers. They shouldn’t take any damage.

Patchwerk melee’s only the tank. His heroic strike hits whoever is in melee range with the highest health, so two offtanks are recommended. Each offtank should have two healers, the “easiest” healing job on this fight is the Main Tank. Ideally I try to balance a “single target” healer with a “multi target” healer on each offtank. Chain Heal shines in this situation, as does Beacon of Light.

(Construct Wing Miniboss – Frogger: No specific healing is necessary, but having a person with a res spell wait at Frogger until everyone has safely gotten through is likely a good idea, especially if Gluth’s Aura of Lag is still active)

Construct Wing Boss the Second: Grobbulus

Main Tank: Two healers: Druid and Pally/Disc Priest generally – Damage on this fight is pretty consistent, unless someone accidentally drops the cloud in the middle of melee.

Offtank: One healer: Druid OR Pally OR Disc Priest – this is the tank who will be picking up the Oozes that Grobby barfs up periodically. If this tank gets Disease Injected, the MT will need to taunt the ooze off of him, and will temporarily need a bit of extra healing.

Raid Mans: Holy Priests, Shamans, Druids – raid healing is largely single target on people that are dropping poison clouds.

Two things: DO NOT CLEANSE THE DISEASE DEBUFF. If necessary, have people remove the buttons from their bars. The other important thing is for healers to be aware that people that get the fart cloud debuff will need some bursty healing – and if two or three healers get the debuff in a row, it can get a little squirrely. Communication is key!

(Construct Wing Miniboss – The Pipe: Don’t fall off the Pipe, or you’ll have to go fight Frogger again. If someone falls who is notoriously bad at Frogger, send a person with a res spell back to speed things up.)

Construct Wing Boss the Third: Gluth

Main Tank/Offtank: Two-Three healers: Druid/Pally/Disc Priest – there will be two tanks swapping back and forth every 30(ish) seconds

Kiters: One healer, any type – Something with CC is nice, in case Zombies get a hankering for healer snax.

Raid Mans: Holy Priests, Shamans, Druids

Raid healing is pretty insignificant in this fight… until the Decimate, when all hell breaks loose for about 30 seconds.When the Decimate happens, healers with AOE Stun/CC abilities (Earthbind Totem/Holy Wrath) will probably want to use them if the Zombie Chow get close to Gluth – if Gluth eats any Zombie Chow, this fight gets MUCH harder.

One thing that we’ve done that works really well for healer-aggro on the Zombie Chow is to have a kiter healer swap with a Tank healer if the Tank healer gets too many friends. Obviously this is serious communication, but once you get used to the swap, it makes it pretty easy – having a the kiter and tank healers both as Paladins can work if (when healing the Tank) they want to pop on Righteous Fury temporarily as a “decoy” so that the Zombie Chow don’t run amok. Three or four Zombies on a Pally healer and they call out and swap with the kiter healer.

Construct Wing Boss the Fourth: Thaddius and Friends

Stalagg Tank: Two-Three Single target healers (a Druid is nice if you’ve got an extra one around) – this guy does an enrage, and hits the tank hard, but the tank is the only one taking damage

Feugen Tank: All your AOE heals – this guy hits EVERYONE on the right side, so will take more substantial group heals.

Thaddius Tank: Two-Three healers on the MT, rest on the raid. Watch Polarity, and if you have too much healing, feel free to have anyone who’s bored nuke a little. Extra DPS is extra DPS!

Stalagg and Feugen are going to chuck the tanks across the room every 30 seconds, so you’ll have to switch to the new tank when that happens. (I’m told that the flying part makes Phase 1 of this fight a lot more fun as a tank!) These guys are like corehounds/Romulo and Julienne – have to kill them at the same time – so balancing the DPS on the two sides is pretty important (again with the communication thing).

Thaddius himself is a DPS race, and the most important thing is to PAY ATTENTION to polarity. Know which side is positive, which is negative, and pay attention in case you switch, so you don’t blow yourself/everyone else up. Explosions are bad.

Also – if you have lag/framerate problems, the spell effects on this fight can be disastrous, so turn your spell effects (in your video settings) all the way down – but make sure you turn them back up for Sapphiron!

*****

Hopefully that’ll help get your raid going on Heroic Naxxramas! Obviously, these are flexible assignments, and you can adjust them to your own raid compositions as necessary. Bringing an assortment of healing classes and specs is a plus, especially in a place like Naxxramas where you’ll have diseases, poisons, magic effects, and curses flying at different times in the raid. Just don’t cleanse that disease from Grobbulus!

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4 Responses to “Cat Herding in Naxx25: Constructy Things”

One helpful thing–have your warlock (you DID bring a warlock, right?) summon people back up on the pipe if they bail out. The new summoning statues are wonderful for that. If the fallers do have to deal with Frogger again, remember, aim for just behind (like, six scale inches behind) a slime. If you attempt to slot right in between two slimes, and your latency is at all high or the server is coughing hairballs, you stand a good chance of the “HEY I WAS NOWHERE NEAR THAT WTF” death.

FYI, Patchwerk’s strikes hit Linedan for around 20,000 to 26,000. That’s against 24k armor. And yes, he can chain them together against the same offtank with surprising speed. We have lost offtanks with 38k health in the first twelve seconds of the fight before, there’s no warmup time before stuff gets nasty.

Also, remember, he enrages at 5%, and if you thought he hit hard before, he turns it up to 11 then. The tanks should pre-emptively use every damage mitigator and health-enhancer they’ve got (Shield Block, Shield Wall, Last Stand for warriors) and DPS needs to push it to the wall to drop him before the damage mitigators run out.

I would have thought Chain Heal on patchwerk fight would have been a bit risky as it heals random targets meaning dps will get healed and possibly one shotted, which will reduce your total dps, which exacerbates the situation if your trying to beat the enrage timer.

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Anna is a 20-something gamer on the Feathermoon (US RP-PVE) Server in World of Warcraft. Here you'll find all kinds of
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